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I found this little article in the Guardian Unlimited today, and I thought it might interest everyone who has ever had the joy of spam.....

Persistent email spammers could face unlimited fines under new legislation announced by the government yesterday.
From December organisations will need prior consent to send unsolicited emails to individual users, although sending messages to company email addresses will be exempt from the law.
The legislation has been welcomed by companies, who see it as the first step in the fight against the many millions of unwanted messages that clog up email servers around the country.
But anti-spam campaigners said the new laws would make little difference to individual users and will effectively legalise the spamming of company email addresses.
Spam, defined in the legislation as "unsolicited email sent without the consent of the addressee and without any attempt at targeting recipients who are likely to be interested in its contents", has been growing exponentially over the past few years. Brightmail, a company that produces filtering software for internet service providers, estimates that up to 50% of global email traffic last month was spam, compared with 8% two years ago.
The new legislation means that unsolicited emails or mobile phone text messages cannot be sent to users without their prior agreement or unless there is an existing customer relationship.
Any organisation in breach of these terms can be reported to the office of the information commissioner, which has powers to then take the organisation to the courts. In the first instance, magistrates can levy fines of up to

This sounds a lot like what they did with the 'Do Not Call' list for telemarketers here in the US.  You can sign up for this list and they can't call you.  Unfortunately, charities and religious organizations are exempt, as is any company you have done business with in the last year.  I think the rules are similar.  This won't stop spam, but it may slow it down a bit.  As for being allowed to send them to private companies.  That should be a law before banning spam to private individuals.  Business is business.  Spamming a company is interfering with that business and adds for Viagra and lower mortgage rates have no place there.

Kevin

Actually, the national do not call registry here in the US is modeled very closely after the NY State registry.

It is essentially nothing more than a dose of feel good medicine.

The telelmarketers can still call you, even if your name is on that list.

If you read the fine print, you're the one required to inform the telemarketers that you're on the list, and only then are they required to abide by your wishes.  If they do not, then YOU are the one who has to fill out the form and then send it in to the state so that the state can pursue the matter.

However, if you leave even ONE field empty on the form, the case can not proceed.

The fields are things like the callers name, phone number, address, etc...

Try getting that information from a telemarketer, and you'll see how useless this list truly is.

Best way to stop telemarketers, get something like the Telezapper or an auto answer telephone. My parents run a business out of their basement so they recently decided to install an auto-answering telephone. What it does is it's one main box connected to four cordless phones for each of the office's employees. The box answers and says for so and so press 1, etc. Because most telemarketing calls are computer dialled, when the our computer picks up on the other end, theirs doesn't know what to do and just hangs up. It doesn't stop the calls but at least stops you from having to hear them.

I do not want to take a survay, I am not interested in time shares, and I don't want to subscribe to the Toronto Star thankyou. It does make me wonder, does this kind of marketing actually work. Well most marketing doesn't work too well to begin with (on me anyway) but I mean compaired to TV and radio ads.

Telemarketers?

I pulled this from somewhere, probably here, so full credit to him or her.

Would love to have this much fun

[quote]Not my story but too funny to be left untold, its very long but worth it...

when a telemarketer calls I like to get their first name and use it many many times in the conversation...

I get rid of telephone marketers the same way I get rid of 'Door to door reps". I hate 'em!.

"Are you selling anything?"

If the answer is "Yes" or anything that sounds like the beginning of a spiel:

"P*** off, or I'll have you killed!"

Dealing with telemarketers. Easy. I'm ex-directory. If someone I don't know calls I ask where they got my number & tell them never to call me again. I rarely get troubled now.

Same with strangers who ring my doorbell.
"Are you selling/promoting something?"
"Well, err, yes."
"I never deal on my doorstep. Goodbye."

These people work to a script which is learned off by heart. If you interrupt their flow they're fixed. LOL

Them:  Hi, Mr Ryan, this is **** with **** and we have a great offer for you today...

Me:  You're with****?

Them: That's right, could I interest you in ****?

Me:  Oh, you're the people with that thing!

Them:  That thing?

Me:  Yeah, you know, that THING!

Them:  What thing is that?

Me:  The Click!

Hangs up...